2. Advantage,benefit,profit all mean something that is of use or value. Advantage is anything that places one in an improved position, especially in coping with competition or difficulties: It is to one's advantage to have traveled widely.Benefit is anything that promotes the welfare or improves the state of a person or group: a benefit to society.Profit is any valuable, useful, or helpful gain: profit from trade or experience.6. serve, avail, help, aid.

advantage

n.

early 14c., avantage, "position of being in advance of another," from Old French avantage "advantage, profit, superiority," from avant "before," probably via an unrecorded Late Latin *abantaticum, from Latin abante (see advance).

The -d- is a 16c. intrusion on the analogy of Latin ad- words. Meaning "a favoring circumstance" (the opposite of disadvantage) is from late 15c. Tennis score sense is from 1640s, first recorded in writings of John Milton, of all people. Phrase to take advantage of is first attested late 14c.